About nine years ago, my mom thoughtfully bought me a pair of black workout gloves, for lifting weights. Those gloves have literally been all around the world with me - they're always in my backpack, just in case there happen to be heavy metal objects to lift at the hotel I'm staying in. A week or two ago, I moved the gloves from my backpack to my workout bag (clever, I know), worked out, went home, etc. The next day, as I'm pulling into my favorite parking spot at work, I spot a black workout glove on the ground. Same brand as mine, just sitting there. At the time, it somehow made logical sense to me that the glove was someone else's, and the best thing I could do is leave it right there for them. Later that day, glove is still there. I worked out, but it was a running day or something. Next day, I think that glove was still lying there. The following day, it was gone. Time to lift weights, check the backpack, only one glove. FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK. And the worst thing is, I probably ran that poor bastard over two or three times. Sorry, Mr. Harbinger Black Workout Glove. R.I.P.
A couple of days ago, as an experiment, I wrote my first blog post ever in a non-English language. It was an attempt to explain some of the reasons that Korean is hard to learn for native English speakers, so I figured I might as well try to write it in Korean. Those of you who actually read Korean can see how awkward the attempt was =).
In any case, the post came from an email conversation I had with The Korean from Ask a Korean, a fantastically well-written blog about all things Korea from the perspective of a Korean who moved to the United States during high school. Since I tend to geek out on language things, I figured I might as well post part of that conversation. An edited version follows.
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Out of the languages that I've attempted to learn so far, Korean has been the hardest. I've done a lot of meta thinking about learning Korean, and I think there are a number of reasons it's difficult for non-Koreans (and especially Westerners) to learn:
1) Obviously, the…
In any case, the post came from an email conversation I had with The Korean from Ask a Korean, a fantastically well-written blog about all things Korea from the perspective of a Korean who moved to the United States during high school. Since I tend to geek out on language things, I figured I might as well post part of that conversation. An edited version follows.
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Out of the languages that I've attempted to learn so far, Korean has been the hardest. I've done a lot of meta thinking about learning Korean, and I think there are a number of reasons it's difficult for non-Koreans (and especially Westerners) to learn:
1) Obviously, the…
Something similar happened to me. It actually happened to me more than once. I had my knitted hat from Roots since I was in Buffalo, NY. I wore it a lot during the winter cos it was really cold. When I got into my car, I'd take it off and put it on my lap. And twice, I totally forgot all about it, got off the car, walked home and realized two days later that I left it frozen to death on the driveway, covered by snow and hard as a stone. I actually walked past it once, thinking what the heck is that ugly thing (as it'd already become wet and black-ish) doing next to my car. I took it home and revived it with warm water and dryer, and did the same thing to it again a few weeks later.
ReplyDeleteAnd then there was last winter, I went to somewhere along central coast with my friends and I lost the hat at the parking lot of some information center, but I'm glad we were able to rescue it from bird and elephant seals. Now it's lying happily on the carpet, ready to serve.